Frith Manor Primary School

Case study

Frith Manor was already a good school before the building project; their challange was to improve on a good thing. The headteacher took the opportunity to discuss with students what features they wanted in their school and worked their ideas into the new design.

Key facts

Type of school: primary with nursery
Number on roll: 720
Headteacher: Reg Herring
Cost of development: £7.5 million
Date completed: June 2006

Background

Shortly after Reg Herring was appointed as headteacher of Frith Manor, the school burnt down. Frith Manor was regarded as a good school by any measure and so the challenge for everyone was to vision and build a new school that was even better than the old one.

Vision

Reg Herring and Don Kent, chair of governors, explain what their vision was for the new school. Leigh Carmichael, deputy headteacher, explains how the school set about merging stakeholders’ visions into one vision for the new school.

Stakeholders

Reg Herring explains the value of consultation with pupils and of keeping them up to date throughout the design and build process. Pupil voice is a key driver, as explained by one pupil who is a member of the school council. Pupils and parents have been challenged to consider what makes a successful learning environment.

Don Kent emphasises the importance of maintaining communication links with everyone including children, parents and the local community. He explains how all stakeholders were kept up to date at every stage of the design and build process.

Reg Herring and the governors set out to visit as many schools as possible in order to ‘seek out good ideas’. All stakeholder groups were consulted at each stage and lines of communication established to ensure that everyone knew exactly what was happening at every stage of the design and build process. The headteacher took responsibility for leading consultations with pupils and the deputy headteacher for consulting with governors, teachers and the community. Pupils had clear ideas about what they wanted in their new school. They wanted light and space in which to work and lockers to store their personal belongings in.

Consultation

The design of the new building and the surrounding grounds were shaped by working closely with both an architect and landscape architect. The architects played a vital role in challenging perceived ideas and presenting new ideas to challenge and shape the emerging vision for the school.

Transformational change

This shows consideration of the way a good school can be transformed into an outstanding school. While recognising the strengths of the old school, the leadership team were challenged to consider what they could add that would enhance, enrich and transform the existing curriculum and teaching practices.

This is a large school and understandably pupils requested a playground for each year group instead of one large communal playground. The request was incorporated into the final design and now each year group has its own playground and pupils can choose to stay within their own play area or join other children in the large communal playground. The outside area is important to the school and a landscape architect was involved in the design process from the very beginning. The result is that although the school sits on a hillside there are sweeping, curved entrances into every part of the school with few, if any, steps to climb. The outside area is designed to ensure that over 700 pupils can leave and enter the school together with little supervision and that there are no congested areas to negotiate.

Many of the features suggested by the different stakeholders have been incorporated into the school design. As much thought and design has gone into the outside of the school as the inside. From the very beginning a landscape architect was involved to ensure that the whole school site was designed and not just the building itself.

Lessons learned

Reg Herring emphasises the amount of time involved at every stage of the process and the need for headteachers to 'clear the decks'. Leigh Carmichael explains how important it is to maintain contact with the architect and the need to have a clearly articulated vision. There were successes, mistakes made and lessons learned, as outlined by Reg and Megan Hallett.

Impact

Frith Manor was already a good school and so the challenge was to build a new school that would not only retain all the existing strengths of the old school but also add to these to ensure the new school was very good. Reg Herring, David Kent and Megan Hallett explain the impact the new building has had on everyone, and the new learning opportunities that are now available to the children.

Next steps

Development of learning needs to continue, particularly with the shared teaching areas. There is ongoing professional development and sharing of best practice to ensure the most effective use is made of the new learning opportunities that the new school presents.